Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: The Unofficial Companion by Susan Green, Randee Dawn Page B
Authors: Susan Green, Randee Dawn
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Nonetheless, the idea caught fire in the svufans.net chat room, with one apparent teenager (“Myhumps”) moaning that “I doubt my parents would let me go all the way to New York.”
It’s difficult to reconcile the frivolity of some SVU followers, who frequently post giddily detailed messages about meeting the stars, with the wrenching facts of any sex crime depicted on the program. So viewer euphoria is something of a sticky wicket. While those who swoon for Meloni, Hargitay, or other performers are surely aware of the show’s profound nature, it could be that the line is blurred between grit and fluff if the actors are attractive enough.
“It’s a very tricky fine line that we walk—and no one has been able to walk it more successfully than (showrunner) Neal Baer,” suggests SVU casting director Jonathan Strauss. “He’s brilliant at blending the two realities, allowing the audience to get a little more attached by giving tidbits of the characters’ personal lives without getting too far away from the procedural essence of the show.”
And luckily, Mariska Hargitay never forgets SVU ’s sagacity. Ordinary fan adoration is matched, maybe even outpaced, by communications from real-life rape victims, many of whom clearly perceive her as a kindred spirit.
“As the show got more popular, I received so many emails from so many survivors,” she recalls, “They were identifying so much with my character, identifying with this lion, this strong powerful (Olivia Benson). And then I had thirteen-year-olds going, ‘I want to be you; you are my role model.’ Hundreds of emails going, ‘I want to be a cop when I grow up.’ And I thought this character has touched something so deep in women and provided a safe place to go. . . . I felt I had a responsibility.”
Neal Baer sums up SVU ’s double-edged appeal. “Mariska and Chris are the yin and yang of the audience,” he suggests. “(She) represents the empathy one feels towards the victim . . . She pulls the audience with her, particularly women. And men think she’s hot. So she’s the empathy we feel; Chris is the rage we feel about what’s happened. The audience can identify with both of them in very deep ways, which makes them quite popular in real life . . . They stand in for ourselves, I think, and how we feel about these things.”
One of the SVU Valentines by acclaimed California pop artist Brandon Bird, an avowed Law & Order fan.
And how does he, as the showrunner of a serious drama, feel about the roar of the crowd in America’s celebrity-obsessed culture? “I do read all of the fan sites,” Baer concedes. “I even go on(line) once in a while—I won’t say what my handle is . . . It’s interesting to get the gestalt.”
For the man at the top, fan zeal eventually boils down to a hardwired business rationale. According a March 2006 article in the San Francisco Chronicle , Dick Wolf told some assembled media critics: “You’ve got an actress sitting up here (Mariska Hargitay) who has received two consecutive Emmy nominations for a show ( SVU ) that everybody would describe as mature. I didn’t see that much fuss made about it. You read about who’s hot, who’s not. These shows are never mentioned. We’re not looking to be the hot show. That’s not what the Law & Order brand is about. It’s about longevity and about repeatability and about staying on the air and being a profit center for NBC for years to come.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
A WEEK IN THE LIFE OF AN EPISODE
“A long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull all together.”
—CHARLES DICKENS, David Copperfield (1849)
MONDAY, JULY 14
9 A.M.
“The stage is in an industrial area on a swamp,” explains Teamster Mario Berritto, driving a Law & Order: Special Victims Unit van from Manhattan’s West Side to the set in New Jersey. “They’re always pulling bodies out of the swamp.”
Hopefully not those of the authors, about to begin our first day of observing the
Nonetheless, the idea caught fire in the svufans.net chat room, with one apparent teenager (“Myhumps”) moaning that “I doubt my parents would let me go all the way to New York.”
It’s difficult to reconcile the frivolity of some SVU followers, who frequently post giddily detailed messages about meeting the stars, with the wrenching facts of any sex crime depicted on the program. So viewer euphoria is something of a sticky wicket. While those who swoon for Meloni, Hargitay, or other performers are surely aware of the show’s profound nature, it could be that the line is blurred between grit and fluff if the actors are attractive enough.
“It’s a very tricky fine line that we walk—and no one has been able to walk it more successfully than (showrunner) Neal Baer,” suggests SVU casting director Jonathan Strauss. “He’s brilliant at blending the two realities, allowing the audience to get a little more attached by giving tidbits of the characters’ personal lives without getting too far away from the procedural essence of the show.”
And luckily, Mariska Hargitay never forgets SVU ’s sagacity. Ordinary fan adoration is matched, maybe even outpaced, by communications from real-life rape victims, many of whom clearly perceive her as a kindred spirit.
“As the show got more popular, I received so many emails from so many survivors,” she recalls, “They were identifying so much with my character, identifying with this lion, this strong powerful (Olivia Benson). And then I had thirteen-year-olds going, ‘I want to be you; you are my role model.’ Hundreds of emails going, ‘I want to be a cop when I grow up.’ And I thought this character has touched something so deep in women and provided a safe place to go. . . . I felt I had a responsibility.”
Neal Baer sums up SVU ’s double-edged appeal. “Mariska and Chris are the yin and yang of the audience,” he suggests. “(She) represents the empathy one feels towards the victim . . . She pulls the audience with her, particularly women. And men think she’s hot. So she’s the empathy we feel; Chris is the rage we feel about what’s happened. The audience can identify with both of them in very deep ways, which makes them quite popular in real life . . . They stand in for ourselves, I think, and how we feel about these things.”
One of the SVU Valentines by acclaimed California pop artist Brandon Bird, an avowed Law & Order fan.
And how does he, as the showrunner of a serious drama, feel about the roar of the crowd in America’s celebrity-obsessed culture? “I do read all of the fan sites,” Baer concedes. “I even go on(line) once in a while—I won’t say what my handle is . . . It’s interesting to get the gestalt.”
For the man at the top, fan zeal eventually boils down to a hardwired business rationale. According a March 2006 article in the San Francisco Chronicle , Dick Wolf told some assembled media critics: “You’ve got an actress sitting up here (Mariska Hargitay) who has received two consecutive Emmy nominations for a show ( SVU ) that everybody would describe as mature. I didn’t see that much fuss made about it. You read about who’s hot, who’s not. These shows are never mentioned. We’re not looking to be the hot show. That’s not what the Law & Order brand is about. It’s about longevity and about repeatability and about staying on the air and being a profit center for NBC for years to come.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
A WEEK IN THE LIFE OF AN EPISODE
“A long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull all together.”
—CHARLES DICKENS, David Copperfield (1849)
MONDAY, JULY 14
9 A.M.
“The stage is in an industrial area on a swamp,” explains Teamster Mario Berritto, driving a Law & Order: Special Victims Unit van from Manhattan’s West Side to the set in New Jersey. “They’re always pulling bodies out of the swamp.”
Hopefully not those of the authors, about to begin our first day of observing the
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